How to Make Money From Affiliate Marketing

If you have a Web site or blog and are looking for a way to earn income from your online property, consider affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate marketing is the term used to describe a revenue-sharing plan where an online automated marketing program lets Webmasters place an advertiser’s banner ads or buttons on their own Web site. Webmasters will receive a referral fee or commission from conversions when a customer has clicked the affiliate link and performs the desired action, such as make a purchase or opt-in for downloads or newsletters on the advertiser’s site. Advertisers invest in affiliate programs for lead generation, and, of course, sales.

How Affiliate Marketing Works: Using affiliate link code to earn money
By Vangie Beal, Last updated: November 20, 2009

WebPlus X4 Adds New Features for Easy Site Design

This all-in-one Web site design program lets you add Web gadgets, set up an online shop and publish sites to the Web in minutes.

One way to get your business Web site up and running is to use Web site design software, such as Web Plus X4 from Serif.  While there are a number of Web design software offerings to choose from, Serif’s Web Plus design software offers e-commerce functions for adding a shopping cart and secure payment processing to your site. You can also include interactive features such as blogs, Flash navigation bars, and videos to your Web shop.

Since we reviewed WebPlus X2 back in June, the company has released a new version of the software, WebPlus X4, and added a number of new features for business and e-commerce site design.

WebPlus X4 Adds New Features for Easy Site Design
By Vangie Beal, November 20, 2009

Zatista Offers Online Venue to Sell Original Artwork

Zatista, a new site for selling original artwork, offers lots of incentives for buyer and flat commissions for artists.

With a goal of connecting buyers with high-quality, original art, Zatista works with individual artists to provide a venue from which the artists can build their own online presence and reach a global marketplace of buyers. Unlike eBay and some other online auction sites, Zatista is a more like an online gallery where buyers can browse art and read artist profiles to find the right piece.

There are no auctions on Zatista, only prices that have been set by the artists. Zatista was first launched in beta last May, and it opened to the public in October. The site currently showcases more than 3,000 distinctive works created by emerging and established artists from more than 17 different countries.

Zatista Offers Online Venue to Sell Original Artwork
By Vangie Beal, November 18, 2009

What Black Friday and Cyber Monday Mean to Your Business

In retail lingo, Black Friday is the first day after Thanksgiving in the United States.  This day is considered to be the official start to the Christmas shopping season.  Many employees in the U.S. have the Friday following Thanksgiving off (even though it is not an official holiday) and start their holiday shopping on this day.  In the retail industry Black Friday is perceived to be one of the largest major shopping days.

The onset of online shopping coined another phrase, “Cyber Monday.”  This is the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving (or the Monday immediately following Black Friday). The idea behind Cyber Monday is that employees head back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday and shop online for the items they did not purchase on the preceding Black Friday.

In theory these two days should result in more sales for online retailers. In reality, however, that isn’t always the way it works out.

What Black Friday and Cyber Monday Mean to Your Business
By Vangie Beal, November 9, 2009

Twitter Dictionary: Understanding Twitter Chat and Slang

As with any new social medium, there is an entire vocabulary that users of the Twitter service adopt. Most of the Twitter-based terms and phrases are used to describe the collection of people who use the service, while other terms are used in reference to describe specific functions and features of the service itself.  Here are more than 20 words and phrases that are associated with the Twitter social service.

Twitter Dictionary: A guide to help you understand Twitter chatter and slang.
By Vangie Beal, November 06, 2009

SocialTwist Offers Social Holiday Referral Rewards Product

SocialTwist’s widget lets online retailers combine social media and quality word-of-mouth marketing with a rewards plan to further encourage shoppers to spread the word about your products.

In the e-commerce industry, a little saying goes hand-in-hand with referral and rewards programs. “Your next best customer is your current best customer’s friend.”

Refer-a-friend programs come in all shapes and sizes and are used by a number of e-commerce Web sites. With the impact social media has had on e-commerce, this year we’re seeing the trend for online retailers to move their traditional, and somewhat stagnant, refer-a-friend campaigns to social media platforms.

SocialTwist, a company that creates widgets to combine marketing messages with visitor referrals, offers a new program to online retailers.  Dubbed the Tell-a-Friend Holiday Sales Booster (TAF HSB), it combines social media word-of-mouth referrals and rewards to help e-commerce sites boost their sales this holiday season.

SocialTwist Offers Social Holiday Referral Rewards
By Vangie Beal, November 4, 2009

Halloween Tech: Weird, Spooky and Odd Technology Terms

Zombies, Smurfs and Wolfpacks, oh my!

In our never-ending quest to gather terms and information for Webopedia, we have found many acronyms and tech terms that strike us as being odd, weird or just plain spooky. To celebrate Halloween tech-style, we’re bringing you a fun — but totally legit — list of some of the spookiest acronyms and tech term oddities we’ve come across while compiling the Webopedia database.

Who knows, maybe one of the following tech terms will spawn a costume idea that will bring first place at this year’s office (IT) Halloween party.

Seriously, we didn’t make these up…

ProStores: DIY Web Shop for Merchants and eBay Sellers

ProStores offer subscription-based Web shops for eBay sellers and online merchants. New features are designed to boost Web shop sales and help you better manage your Web store.

EBay sellers can use ProStores to open an “off-eBay” Web store that completely integrates with their eBay account information, listings and settings. 

One of the biggest challenges eBay sellers — who use both eBay and their own store — face is avoiding “double selling”.  Fortunately ProStores synchronizes eBay listings and Web shop inventory. If an item sells on eBay, it will not appear as available for purchase on your ProStores Web shop (and vise versa).

Even if you do not currently use eBay, you can still use ProStores to create your own Web shop. 

ProStores: DIY Web Shop for Merchants and eBay Sellers
By Vangie Beal, October 29, 2009

TRUSTe Offers Privacy Services for Small Businesses

TRUSTe offers a new service to help small online businesses get a professional privacy policy in place and secure Web sites to boost consumer confidence.

A survey by TRUSTe showed that fifty-six percent of small business owners have no privacy policy in place. Even worse —the study revealed that one-third of small businesses admitted that they cut-and-pasted a privacy policy from another Web site into their own site. Not only can this damage your own business and the business you steal a privacy policy from, but it is also creates a risky situation for your site visitors.

TRUSTe Offers Privacy Services for Small Businesses
By Vangie Beal, October 19, 2009

Publish eBay Listings on Social Sites with Page Mage

Page Mage, an eBay Compatible Application, which launched in beta last August, has recently upgraded its service to include social networking features for eBay sellers, along with a new pricing structure.

Using Page Mage, you can improve your eBay selling page by listing items in a more interactive and engaging way. For example, you can embed video, show eBay image galleries, or add scrolling text to any eBay auction or fixed-price item listing when you use the Page Mage service.

Chris Taylor, vice president of marketing, said that the newly added social features are designed to help sellers reach out to friends and their network of friends on some of the more popular social media sites.

Page Mage: Publish eBay Listings on Social Sites
By Vangie Beal, October 14, 2009

SEO Marketing Tips: Optimize E-mail Campaigns

SEO is a great compliment to e-mail marketing. Wendy Lowe from Campaigner offers tips to help you optimize your e-mail marketing campaigns for search engines.

To take advantage of SEO, you need to archive your e-mail campaigns online—on your own Web site or blog. On your Web site, you should offer links to your past newsletters right from the main page navigation. Not only will this provide new content for your site visitors to read, but you will also get more mileage out of relevant content when you repurpose your e-mail campaigns.

Wendy Lowe, Campaigner’s director of product marketing says that SEO and e-mail are a great compliment to one another. She continued, “Using SEO best practices can really help you hone in on what customers are searching for.”

SEO Marketing Tips: Optimize E-mail Campaigns
By Vangie Beal, October 12, 2009

EBay Adds Top-Rated Badges, Ups Buy-It-Now Conditions

This week eBay rolls out the new Top-rated Seller program, retires some listing features, and also adjusts “Buy it Now”. Plus, Vendio helps sellers easily change policies across all live listings.

This month, when top-rated rolled out, a number of sellers who met the requirements were not invited to the program because they were not PowerSellers. Information provided by eBay in a previous announcement indicated that qualifying sellers who were not PowerSellers would not receive an invite to top-rated until April of next year. Being excluded from the top-rated seller program right before the rush of holiday sales was the biggest issue for sellers.

The topic had many sellers upset and frustrated, however Brian Burke from the Seller Standards Team used the official discussion forum to tell sellers that if they qualify for top-rated now—including those who do not have PowerSeller status but meet $3,000 U.S. sales per year— they would receive invites for the PowerSeller program the week of October 11th. This will make those sellers eligible for top-rated status around October 20th.

While the official clarification helped, some smaller sellers posting to the discussion forum believe that top-rated will continue to hurt their eBay business by making their listings near-impossible to find and less appealing to buyers in eBay search results.

EBay Adds Top-Rated Badges, Ups Buy-It-Now Conditions
By Vangie Beal, October 7, 2009

Text Messaging Demystified

The Webopedia Guide to Understanding Online Chat Acronyms has been updated with definitions to more than 1,180 chat abbreviations. I know… SRSLY, GTFO! DIS 1180? YGTBKM!

(Seriously, get the *freak* out! 1180? You got to be kidding me!)

Using Google Trends to Choose Article Keywords

Google Trends is a goldmine for online article writers. As a writer, not only do I need to write compelling content, but I also need to think about using good keywords to help drive Google search engine traffic to the article when it is published.  

Let’s pretend I am going to write an article on computer security. I could consider any of the following titles:

• 5 Computer Security Tips
• 5 PC Security Tips
• 5 Windows Security Tips 

To help me choose the best title for the article, I use Google Trends to see how frequently the keywords and phrases I am considering have been searched for in Google.  Google Trends will show you the average search traffic for the terms you enter in the search box.

Here are the steps to do this:

• Go to Google trends at http://www.google.com/trends
• In the search box type: computer, PC, Windows (notice the keywords are separated by a comma) and click “Search Trends”.

The resulting graph shows the frequency your keywords were used in a Google search query. In this example Windows is searched for the most, followed by PC then computer.

Google Trends: computer, PC, Windows

 I’ll do the same test again, this time using “computer security”, “PC security”, and “Windows security”. In this instance, Windows Security is still the most popular search; however computer security is more popular than PC security.

Google Trends: computer security, PC security, Windows security

For this article, I would use “5 Windows Security Tips” as the title, provided it was a precise match for the content of the article (remember you have to write for humans first and engines second). For a more general security tips article I would use “5 Computer Security Tips” in the title of the article.

You can also quickly check Google Trends when trying to decide between using a singular or plural form of a word or to see if people search for formal words or its slang variation more often.  For example, “bike” is used more frequently in Google search queries than “bicycle”, and “classified ads” is far more popular in searches than “classified ad.”

You can use Google trends to compare up to five comma-separated keywords or keyword phrases at one time.

BrandConnect: Social Media Tools for Brand Awareness

The BrandConnect Suit helps brand owners track, analyze and shout out to consumers and their followers on social media platforms.

PowerReviews’ new BrandConnect Suite is designed to help merchants listen to what is being said about their brand in the socialsphere, and it consists of two offerings:  Listener and Megaphone.  Listener is a social monitoring and analytics tool and Megaphone is a tool that can be used to harness customers—and their followers—to quickly and effectively spread the word about the brand and the company’s products.

The BrandConnect tools follow on the heels of the  “Community and Social Media Study” findings. The study, released by The E-Tailing Group was commissioned by PowerReviews.  Darby Williams, vice president of marketing at PowerReviews said that the research helps the company to better understand how much adoption of social media marketing has taken place in the retail industry.

The study, which assessed the attitudes and actions of brands and retailers as they make their way through the world of social media, found that five out of ten social media tools have been adopted by more than 50 percent of brands and retailers, and that the Facebook Fan Page was the most popular social media platform

 BrandConnect: Social Media Tools for Brand Awareness
By Vangie Beal, September 29, 2009